Galleries

Main menu

Secondary menu

Performance: Parangolés

1 August 2007

Painting and samba - the art of Oiticica

tabs

About

This performance recreates the groundbreaking work of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. Frustrated by the limitations of painting, Oiticica devoted himself to finding ways in which painting could be taken off the gallery walls and out into 3-dimensional space. One result was his ‘Parangolés’ of the mid-1960s. Literally habitable paintings, they were designed to be worn while dancing to the rhythm of samba. They came out of his involvement with the people of Mangueira Hill, a Rio de Janeiro shanty town, and Mangueira’s famous samba school. The artist’s nephew, César Oiticica Fihlo, takes up the story.

Transcription

Helio Oiticica was a Brazilian artist that began with painting in the 50s. Then he took the colour from the painting from the walls of galleries and museums to this space, through the Parangolés. Parangolés is a work that you can wear, most known by the capes, because the capes the people wear to dance, to perform and it’s a work that works very well with the body. What you are going to see here is the way he brought this colour from the objects to people’s lives. In ‘64 Helio went to Manguiera, which is a shanty town in Rio and he started to dance samba with the dancers who were only black people at that time. And then he brought this experience to his work and with the Parangolés he invited these dancers to wear the capes and dance with them in a big museum, in an exhibition. But they were not allowed and they stayed outside dancing with the drummers and all the people from Manguiera. Life was quite a shock at that time. Here in London you have the School of Samba, the London School of Samba. You have dancers from here which I think is very nice, it’s incredible and normal people that want to join in in this parade, in this event, have been invited to participate. When people perform Parangolés they are moving the colour. I think the most significant lesson of the Parangolés is the spirit of liberty because when you start to play you become like a kind of child and so you begin to discover a liberty of your soul through this work, which is incredible.